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British troops lining up for anthrax jabs

By Debora MacKenzie

British troops on their way to the Gulf are rolling up their sleeves for the controversial anthrax vaccine.

With the likelihood of a war with Iraq rising, the number of infantry soldiers opting for the voluntary vaccination has nearly doubled in the past few weeks, according to the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Only about half of infantry troops opted for the anthrax vaccine when the programme was revived in May 2002. But in the past few weeks those numbers have climbed to 80 or 90 per cent, says the MoD. Royal Navy sailors, in contrast, consider themselves safe offshore – uptake has remained at about 15 per cent.

Military analysts have warned that in a war Iraq is likely to use its chemical and biological weapons. The possibility of attacks against ships in the Gulf gained some support on Friday, after the BBC reported receiving Iraqi military documents detailing naval attacks.

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The BBC says the documents were smuggled out of Iraq by opposition activists. They reportedly also refer to chemical warfare suits to protect Iraqi soldiers and distribution of the drug atropine to counter the effects of nerve gas.

Gulf War Syndrome

The acceleration of the MoD’s programme of anthrax and other vaccinations has led veterans’ associations to warn that many soldiers could suffer adverse effects in the long term. The associations point to the thousands of soldiers who developed a range of illnesses that has come to be called Gulf War Syndrome, after the last Gulf conflict in 1991.

Then British and US troops received a cocktail of vaccines against Iraq’s suspected biological weapons, such as bubonic plague and anthrax. Ever since, some have blamed the vaccines for a range of ailments from muscle aches and depression to severe auto-immune disorders.

British Gulf veterans reporting illnesses are significantly more likely than healthy veterans to have had either the bioweapons vaccines, or a cocktail of seven or more conventional vaccines, according to a 1999 study by the Gulf War Illness Research Unit in London, UK.

Another study at the University of Manchester in 2001 found that the more inoculations soldiers received, the more severe symptoms they reported.

10-day window

But the British and US authorities insist there is no evidence of a specific syndrome related to service in the Gulf. The MoD insists the anthrax vaccine is safe, and that “there is no evidence that giving other vaccines alongside anthrax causes more adverse reactions than giving them separately”.

Yet ever since the mid-1990s its policy has been not to give live vaccines or gamma globulins – antibodies that confer passive immunity – in the five days before or after giving anthrax vaccine. In practice, no other vaccines are given.

This is “just to give the benefit of the doubt to people who believe this causes difficulties”, the MoD told New Scientist.

The 10-day “window” appears to be unique to the British military. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has ruled that it is safe to combine anthrax vaccine with any number of other inoculations. Unlike British soldiers, US soldiers are not given a choice – anthrax vaccination is mandatory, and several have faced court martial rather than take it.